Staff Newsletter - September/October 2010

Water feelingCollege pool’s timely makeover

Landscape studies: a varied terrainpage 10

The wonder of scientific imagery

page 8

The magazine for The sTaff of The UniversiTy of Cambridge sepTember/oCTober 2010

2 | september/october 2010 | UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE NEwSlETTER

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neWsLeTTerThe Newsletter is published for the staff of the University of Cambridge and is produced by the Office of External Affairs and Communications. Please send in ideas for the content and ways we can improve the publication. Tel: (3)32300 or email [email protected] for articles for the November/December edition should reach the Editor by 1 October.Editor: Andrew AldridgeAdvertising: Nick SaffellDesign: www.creative-warehouse.co.ukPrinters: Labute PrintersContributors: Andrew Aldridge, Becky Allen, Alex Buxton, Abbie Long, Stuart Roberts.

neWsLeTTer onLinewww.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/newsletter

sassoon exhibition: The treasures of Siegfried Sassoon’s personal archive have gone on public display for the first time at the University Library. Exhibits include his diary recounting the first day at the Battle of the Somme, and this light-hearted sketch by the poet of a memorial he wanted erected to him on Market Hill, Cambridge. ‘Dream Voices: Siegfried Sassoon, Memory and War’, runs until 23 December. The archive was bought by the library after a £1.25m fundraising campaign.

Access all areas: Newnham College, pictured, was one of the many venues and institutions that opened their doors to the public this month as part of Open Cambridge. The weekend included tours, walks and open access events that allowed local residents and community groups to experience the University and city’s rich heritage. This year saw a number of activities targeted specifically at families and children.

Hot shot: This picture was one of 165 entries to the 2010 Engineering Department photo competition. Taken by student Nate Sharpe, it shows a rifle bullet slicing through a playing card, and was taken with a flash of 400 billionths of a second. The competition, which was won by Dr Robert Gordon, invites anyone who works in the department – whether academic, student or member of supporting staff – to submit a photograph connected with their everyday work.

coverGenerous alumni have saved Christ’s historic bathing pool. Turn to page 4

2-5 News round-up

6-7 Getting practicalIt started with an item in the Newsletter – now former staff member Anthea Bain is a student at the University

8-9 behind the scenesHow Cambridge researchers and technicians are creating some of science’s most stunning pictures

10-11 making a differenceLandscape studies can help us understand the past – and shape our future

12-13 prizes, awards and honours

14 obituary

15 Advertisements

Water feelingCollege pool’s timely makeover

Landscape studies: a varied terrainpage 10

The wonder of scientific imagery page 8

The magazine for The sTaff of The UniversiTy of Cambridge

sepTember/oCTober 2010

open again: The last letters of Captain Scott and his companions have returned to public display as one of the world’s most important collections of polar artefacts was opened by the Earl and Countess of Wessex. The Polar Museum at the Scott Polar Research Institute – which also holds the expedition diaries of Sir Ernest Shackleton and the photographic records of Herbert Ponting – has undergone a two-year transformation as part of a £1.75m redevelopment.

september/october 2010 | UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE NEwSlETTER | 3

WhaT’s neW

vice-Chancellor becomes dame alison

Your comments and contributions are always welcome. Please send them to the Editor at [email protected] deadline for the next issue is 1 October.

THE CAMBRIDGE FESTIVAL of Ideas returns next month, giving visitors the chance to experience a huge range of talks and workshops.

The 11-day festival, which runs from 20-31 October, celebrates the arts, humanities and social sciences. This year’s guest speakers include the children’s author Jacqueline Wilson and The Guardian columnist Lucy Mangan.

The festival’s flagship event, the annual Mark Pigott Lecture, will be delivered this year by Professor Linda Colley, who will speak on the subject ‘When did the British Constitution become unwritten?’. Professor Colley is a British historian whose 1992 study Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 explored the development of Britishness following the 1707 Acts of Union. She is Shelby M C Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University.

Other highlights include a family

arts and culture for all

VICE-CHANCELLOR PROFESSOR Alison Richard has been appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire for services to higher education.

The announcement was made in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

During her seven-year term as Vice-Chancellor, which concludes at the end of this month, she has argued consistently for deliberate diversity of mission in UK higher education.

Dame Alison has overseen the establishment of needs-based bursaries to ensure that undergraduate students and applicants can always afford to study at Cambridge, and she has supported major teaching and research initiatives across academic disciplines.

Her term of office has also seen the development of alumni as advisers

day on 23 October, which will see many departments hosting interactive events for children, and Ideas in the Community, which will take Festival of Ideas events to local community centres.

➔ For more details visit www.festivalofideas.org

Dame Alison Richard: honoured for services to higher education

and ambassadors for Cambridge, and the strengthening of strategic communications – with alumni, the wider public, and national and international decision-makers. As part of this engagement, alumni have contributed impressively to the 800th Anniversary Campaign which, it was announced in June, has now raised more than £1 billion.

The priority of developing alumni relations has also been woven into Dame Alison’s extensive travels in support of Cambridge’s growing international activity.

On her watch, Cambridge has also established an Investment Office, and reorganised the management of the endowment, to enable endowment income to contribute effectively to a healthy mix of income sources.

In addition to Dame Alison’s

appointment, Professor Colin Humphreys, Goldsmiths’ Professor of Materials Science, was awarded a knighthood for services to science. A Fellow of Selwyn, Sir Colin founded and directs the Cambridge Centre for Gallium Nitride.

Professor Athene Donald, Deputy Head of the Cavendish Laboratory,

was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire for services to Physics. Dame Athene, a Fellow of Robinson, has worked at the University’s Cavendish Laboratory since 1983 and was elected to the Royal Society in 1999.

➔ Further coverage of the Queen’s Birthday Honours is on page 12.

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alumni splash out for Christ’s

MEMBERS OF CHRIST’S did not have far to look for a swim this summer as the restoration of its Fellows’ Bathing Pool was completed ahead of June and July’s warm weather.

Archives suggest that the outdoor pool – thought to be the oldest of its kind in the country still in use – was built in the late-17th century. Famous alumni who might have cooled off in it waters include William Paley, Charles Darwin and Louis Mountbatten.

But over the past 20 years the pool had slipped into decline, with fewer and fewer fellows brave enough to venture in. Only last year its future was as murky as the water that filled it. Other uses were suggested, including turning it into an ornamental pond.

All that changed when the college turned to its alumni for help. It had already received a sizeable donation from alumnus Richard Barlow-Poole, who had swum in it during the late 1930s. Though extremely generous, it wasn’t enough. So Christ’s Development Director Catherine Twilley, herself a keen swimmer, launched an appeal to bring the pool up to modern standards, as well as restore the Palladian-style pavilion. Donations soon began to pour in.

Meanwhile an investigation into the pool’s history discovered that it was not Victorian, as had been supposed, but far older. Just how old might remain a mystery, for while records suggest that a pool existed before 1688, there is a tantalising gap in the college archives

for the preceding decades. The pool’s design is suavely

classical, with its perimeter decorated with busts of Christ’s scholars – including astronomer Ralph Cudworth, poet John Milton, mathematician Nicholas Saunderson and polymath Joseph Mede. An imposing urn is rumoured to hold the ashes of physicist and author CP Snow.

At the suggestion of Barlow-Poole, who sadly died before he could see it restored, the pool has been renamed the Malcolm Bowie Bathing Pool in honour of the Master of Christ’s from 2002 to 2006, and is open to staff and students as well as Fellows.

In a little corner of Christ’s, hidden behind ancient walls, the swimming and dreaming go on.

Homerton celebrates

Homerton celebrated the award of its Royal Charter this summer with a garden party. The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Alison Richard, welcomed the college to the University, and Sir David Harrison, former Chairman of the Homerton Board of Trustees, replied on the college’s behalf. The College Charter Choir sang William Byrd’s Sing Joyfully, as well as a new piece for the occasion with words by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and music by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Attendees also enjoyed a performance by the Homerton Steel Drums, pictured. The college, which formerly specialised in teacher training, now admits students to all subjects except medicine.

college appointments

Lesley Thompson, pictured, has joined Lucy Cavendish as Bursar. She replaces Dr David Carter, who has retired after four years with the college. Lesley has worked in various senior roles in higher education and arts development following her initial qualification as a Chartered Accountant.

Murray Edwards also has a new Bursar. Paola Morris comes to the college from the British Academy in London, where she was Director of Finance and Corporate Services.

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The pool last November – before renovation

Members of the college enjoy the newly restored bathing pool

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Pay a visit to the online edition of the Newsletter: www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/newsletter/

AFTER FIVE YEARS of hard work to reduce its carbon footprint, the University has been awarded the Carbon Trust Standard – the officially recognised benchmark for organisations that have taken successful action on climate change.

A combination of old, energy-inefficient buildings and the lack of a joined-up monitoring system for energy use meant that, as recently as 2006, the University had energy and water bills exceeding £9m. This equated to per annum carbon emissions of about 66,200 tonnes.

Since then, and working in partnership with the trust, the figure has been reduced so dramatically that carbon emitted per pound of income is now down on the 2006 figure by an impressive 17 per cent. This means the University has made a CO2 saving of 1,130 tonnes a year.

University awarded green accolade

UNIVERSITY STAFF now have access to two new benefits schemes.

CAMbens Discounts, launched this month, will help employees and their families spend less when they shop at a range of leading retailers.

Staff can log on to the CAMbens website using their payroll number (see ‘Find out more’ bottom right), set up a password and enjoy a range of discounts with companies such as Boots, Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s.

There are more than 1,700 participating stores in all, which means employees can save money on a wide range of household expenses – from groceries and white goods, to holidays and insurance. They will have exclusive access to discounted vouchers, savings and cashback rewards at their favourite stores whether online, in-store or over the phone.

Cashback can be accumulated from different retailers and withdrawn

THE UNIVERSITY IS LOOKING to recruit and train volunteers to help with its Dignity@Work service.

Dignity@Work volunteers are trained to support members of the University affected by bullying and harassment. Such support includes meeting individuals who approach the service, listening to their concerns and helping them analyse the problems they face. It also involves explaining the University’s policy on bullying and harassment, highlighting internal and external sources of support, and helping staff decide a course of action.

Volunteers will acquire useful professional skills, meet and work with a friendly team of contacts and have the opportunity to help colleagues improve their working lives.

For further information, please contact Lyn Goodenough ([email protected], extension 67836).

straight into employees’ personal bank accounts.

Also new this term is CAMbens Cars, a salary sacrifice scheme that enables employees to lease fuel-efficient University-provided vehicles.

Feedback on the schemes has been positive. Ann Cartwright, Departmental Administrator at the Gurdon Institute is one who is impressed. “This is a good opportunity to recognise the hard

The process began with a carbon footprint survey. An independent consultant studied the systems and processes used to manage the University’s energy, and helped University Energy Manager Paul Hasley and Environmental Officer Martin Whiteland get new initiatives to control energy use off the ground.

The procedures they put in place involved making changes to all of the 350 teaching, research and administrative buildings around the city, not including the 31 colleges. Information about the energy consumption profile of each one was collected and made accessible via a central database, and staff across the University made real efforts to save energy by controlling their use of lighting, computers and laboratory equipment.

“The University regards reducing

new benefits schemes help pay go further help fellow staff

carbon emissions as an important activity, and receiving this award proves that all the efforts being made in this direction are bearing fruit,” Mr Hasley said.

“The University should be very proud of all the staff who rose to the

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Buildings like the Institute of Manufacturing have helped Cambridge cut its carbon footprint

Shop for less at a range of leading retailers

find oUT more

➔ For more information on both schemes, call 0845 299 0908 or log on to the CAMbens website at http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/staff/benefits/.

➔ Two roadshows will take place on 30 September and 29 October at the University Centre from 11am to 2pm.

work and contribution of our staff at a time when we have more limited financial resources to do so,” she said.

Trades unions UNISON, Unite and the University and College Union all welcomed the initiatives. “CAMbens Discounts is a great new benefit and should help employees’ salaries go that bit further during these difficult financial times, particularly those on low incomes,” said UNISON Branch Chair Alan Davis.

challenge of saving energy over the last few years.”

Cambridge has also gained credit under the Carbon Reduction Commitment, which places it in a league table of the most energy efficient organisations in Britain.

6 september/october 2010 | UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE NEwSlETTER

getting practical

From staff to studentAnthea Bain was working at Trinity Hall when she spotted an item in the Newsletter publicising opportunities for studying at Cambridge as a mature student. Now she is preparing to start her second year reading English at Lucy Cavendish. She describes how the move from staff member to student “has turned her life upside down – in the most positive way imaginable”

Staff member-turned Cambridge student Anthea Bain in the garden of Lucy Cavendish

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When and why did you decide to study english?I was in publishing for more than 20 years, working on a whole string of titles – including Vogue and House & Garden. I loved every moment of it, but there was always this nagging thought that I’d missed out on something important in my life – university. When I was younger I wanted to be a vet. That wasn’t something open to me as an older student so I decided to study English. I’ve always loved literature – from Chaucer to McEwan, and I enjoy the process of writing and the way it is creative and challenging. When I graduate I’ll be 64 and I’ll have just a year of conventional working life left. I’d love to spend that year doing further study. After that I plan to finish the book I started a few years ago – it’s a mix of travel, cookery and chick lit.

Why did you apply to cambridge?A couple of years ago the company I was working for in London underwent restructuring and I took a payout. But I’m not someone who can do nothing. Because I live not far from Cambridge I also took various part-time jobs at the University to help fund my writing. I ended up working with the Master of Trinity Hall, Professor Martin Daunton. One day my eye was caught by an item in the University Newsletter inviting staff to come to an open day for mature students. That was it – I signed up, talked to some of the admissions tutors, and before I knew it I was planning to apply!

What did you do before coming to cambridge?A lot! I was brought up in a fenland farming family and left school after taking O-levels. I wanted to stay on for A-levels but my mother had been widowed young and wanted me to acquire some practical skills. So I did a secretarial course and then trained to be a nurse. It was the 1960s and I even squeezed in a spot of modelling, appearing on the pages of Petticoat magazine wearing a paper dress! I worked in nursing and later for Condé Nast Publications – before travelling in Greece for a year. When I got back I returned to Condé Nast, moved on to other publishing houses, and worked hard to make my way up to board level in the trade press. My career gave me countless skills and was hugely rewarding. But I still hankered to study at university.

can you tell us about applying to lucy cavendish?I had vaguely heard about a Cambridge college for mature women called Lucy Cavendish, but it didn’t really dawn on me that I would be able to study there until I went to the mature students open day – which was held at Wolfson College. The more I found out, the more I realised that Lucy was the place for me – I like the single sex environment of the college and the supportive atmosphere.

On the advice of the Lucy Cavendish admissions tutor, I took an Open University course called Approach to Literature and got a distinction – I applied to Lucy Cavendish during that year. I was interviewed and offered a place. I felt elated.

What’s the workload like at cambridge?It’s hard, no doubt about that. Each week I go to approximately a dozen lectures and attend two or three supervisions with classes and seminars. We’re expected to produce up to three 2,000-word essays a week.

You might think that having worked in publishing all those years, I would find it a doddle to dash off my assignments. You’d be wrong. Academic writing is quite different from the journalistic style I was used to – essays have to be much more analytical and rigorous. I’ve been pulled up for being too colloquial in my use of English and have had to learn to be more logical and disciplined.

Before the course started we were warned that we would have to put the rest of our lives on hold while we were Cambridge students. I thought to myself: “Rubbish, of course I can juggle doing the course with keeping up with the rest of my life.”

Again, I was quite wrong – it demands every scrap of my attention and time.

Anthea modelling for The West Anglian magazine in 1967

What’s it been like fitting in and making new friends?There are six of us in the same year studying English at Lucy Cavendish, and we range in age from 20s to 60s. Everyone’s different and we’ve all had different life experiences. Three of us have formed an especially strong bond – and the husband of the most senior student has named us the Gang of Three.

Some of my non-university friends assume that if you’re an older student you do a different – and easier – course than the standard age students. I’ve had to put them straight on that – we do exactly the same course as the 18-year-olds, attending the same lectures and having to meet the same requirements and demands.

There are certainly some benefits to being older – you do bring more life experience to your studies. This can help, for example, when you’re studying Shakespeare and analysing the motives and behaviour of his characters. And because I was in publishing, the process of writing holds no fears for me. I don’t have the blank screen terror that less experienced students might have.

What advice would you give to someone thinking about applying to cambridge as a mature student?Becoming a Cambridge student has turned my life upside down – in the most positive way imaginable. I’m meeting inspirational people and I am learning to think in a way I’ve never done before. It’s so liberating to be taught by some of the best brains in the country and to be digging deep inside myself. I can almost hear my synapses stretching and snapping. To other prospective mature students, I’d say: just go for it.

Find out more

➔ If you’re over 21 and you’ve been inspired by reading Anthea’s story, you too might like to consider studying at Cambridge.

➔ There are four colleges for mature students at the University: Hughes Hall; Lucy Cavendish College; St Edmund’s College; and Wolfson College. All take students aged 21 and over and Lucy Cavendish is for women only. The standard-age Cambridge colleges also accept mature students. ➔ For more information on opportunities for studying at Cambridge as a mature student, plus details of events, open days and residential summer schools, go to www.cam. ac.uk/admissions


behind the scenes

How do you go about photographing a distant star formation or the inside of a locust’s brain? Cambridge researchers and technicians reveal all

seeing is believing

THEY ARE BLU-TACkED onto bedroom walls, cover the corridors of every science department in Cambridge and illuminated the University’s most iconic buildings during the light show that ended the 800th anniversary year. But how are these scientific images produced? How much are they manipulated, and what truth – as opposed to beauty – do they contain?

Today, we can ‘see’ the most amazing things. Thanks to telescopes and microscopes, photography and computing power, scientists can visualise the beginnings of human life and the

deaths of distant stars – things too small for the naked eye to see and too large for our brains to comprehend easily.

But capturing these images is a complicated business. According to Professor Raymond E Goldstein from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics: “Despite the ubiquity of high-resolution digital cameras, producing these pictures is far from simple. You need to go to great lengths to get it right.”

Fascinated by the stalactite-hung limestone caves near the University of Arizona where he worked until four years

ago, Professor Goldstein wondered why stalactites were long and pointy and how these forms could best be explained in mathematical terms. After developing a mathematical theory for the shape, he and his colleagues set about testing their results using photography.

“We took images of the stalactites, digitised the shapes and compared these to the theory. The photographs are stunning, but they are more than just ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ – there is deep science in these images,” he says.

Since leaving Arizona for Cambridge, Professor Goldstein’s gaze has shifted

Scientists can visualise the beginnings of human life and the deaths of distant stars

Above: this image – showing the half brain of a solitarious locust on the left and the half brain of a gregarious, swarming locust of the same species on the right – was created by Dr Swidbert ott of the Department of Zoology. he used fluorescence-labelled proteins and laser scanning microscopy. “it’s taken me years of work to perfect the art of getting the specimen into the right condition so that the imaging works,” he says

Left: a colour image of the orion nebula constructed from images taken by the ViStA telescope in paranal, Chile. the institute of Astronomy in Cambridge is involved in both the data processing and scientific exploitation of the telescope’s infrared surveys of the southern sky

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Above: professor raymond e goldstein, from the Department of Applied mathematics and theoretical physics, and members of his research group used a super high-resolution camera to measure changes on an icicle’s surface. “i was driven to study icicles because they are beautiful, because of the aesthetics of the evolution of their shape. it’s such a simple process that we should be able to find a law to explain it,” he says

from stalactites to icicles: “I looked at icicles, which are long and skinny like stalactites, and wondered if the maths were similar.”

In collaboration with Grae Worster, Professor of Fluid Dynamics at the Institute of Theoretical Geophysics, and Senior Research Fellow Jerome Neufeld, the group produced something resembling a large ice lolly. They watched it melt using a super high-resolution camera (see picture series above), taking images every few minutes and using the 500 photographs to measure changes on the icicle’s surface.

“Our job is to understand the world, to put order into it. I was driven to study icicles because they are beautiful, because of the aesthetics of the evolution of their shape. It’s such a simple process that we should be able to find a law to explain it,” he says.

Just as Professor Goldstein finds beauty in ice and the maths behind its melting, Dr Swidbert Ott from the Department of Zoology sees extraordinary beauty in the lentil-sized brains of the locusts he studies, and has gone to great lengths to develop techniques that allow him to image them accurately – and aesthetically.

According to Dr Ott: “A major challenge is to fix the brain tissues so that they are preserved in a life-like state and are able to withstand all the subsequent dyeing and drying without becoming distorted. It’s taken me years of work to perfect the art of getting the specimen into the right condition so that the imaging works.”

Using fluorescence-labelled proteins, confocal laser scanning microscopy and software more commonly found in functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of human patients, Dr Ott takes optical sections of the locusts’ brains.

“These virtual slices of brain are

digitised and show the fluorescent protein in the brain point by point at very high resolution,” he says. “You end up with a stack of optical sections through the brain in the computer that you can reassemble and manipulate.”

The results – an example of which is shown opposite – are stunning and, Dr Ott admits, far more aesthetic than the data demand. “You need to produce a dataset, but my results could have been published without images – with the data captured in double-logarithmic plots – that’s what interests my peers,” he says. “But I think the mathematical analysis becomes more tangible when you look at the images.

“The aesthetics are intrinsic to the structure, so I’ve tried to do justice to that – to get the best data with the fewest artefacts and by doing so I end up with something visually stunning.”

While not essential to his science, Dr Ott believes that producing such images is crucial to communicating his science to a wider audience, both to the general public and to academics in other fields. “Close to my heart is getting across the fact that bugs have brains; that they’re not just filled with goo. They are highly structured inside, and I hope my images make people think.”

Some of science’s most iconic images come from telescopes rather than microscopes – pictures of distant nebulae and galaxies whose size is measured not in fractions of a metre but in millions of light years.

Dr Robin Catchpole of the Institute of Astronomy, who has worked with the Hubble Space Telescope, describes how these images are created: “We use a set of filters to isolate different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. We observe a galaxy, for example, at three different wavelengths – red, green and blue. By measuring the amount of energy

emitted at each wavelength we can find the temperatures of the stars. And by combining three images we can produce these pretty pictures.”

The degree to which images are manipulated or enhanced is often debated but, as Dr Ott points out, scientists could alter their images long before the advent of digital photography and Photoshop.

“When I did my MSc and used the darkroom I could do the same thing – use different filters and paper to alter my images. Scientists and technicians have always had to choose what to show and what not to show.”

For Professor Goldstein, questions of manipulation arise even before his images exist: “Most of the ‘manipulation’ goes on in the process of acquiring the images – playing with light and contrast so that we can detect edges accurately, for example.”

And while the scientific community expects researchers to be honest in the images they publish in peer-reviewed research, Dr Robin Catchpole believes the public requires honesty too. This is particularly true for the colours added to astronomical photographs. “What is acceptable manipulation is quite clear in astronomy. The filters we use don’t approximate to the human eye, but the colours we assign must have some quantitative value. The image has to reflect some kind of truth, even though it’s not what we would see with the naked eye.”

Without this honesty and accuracy, these images become art rather than science and, Dr Catchpole believes, lose their power to inspire a new generation of astronauts and astronomers: “These images are only valuable and inspiring if you know there is some underlying truth in them. Otherwise we might as well just colour them in by hand,” he says.


EvERY DAY, PEOPLE ENJOY and connect with landscapes – both rural and urban. For staff who live in or close to Cambridge, this might involve walking in the Fens, taking a trip to a National Park or simply cherishing a particular corner of a common or wood.

But how many of us stop to consider how a favourite landscape has been formed, what it says about the generations of people who have managed and shaped it, or what it might look like in another couple of centuries?

What impact will the effects of climate change and population growth have on that landscape, on the people who live there and the wildlife it sustains? Who will decide how its historical and cultural heritage is preserved? To what extent will the public be involved in those decisions?

These are some of the most compelling issues of our times, and they

are the source of much research and teaching at Cambridge, in departments that include Archaeology, Land Economy, Geography and Architecture among others.

Studying the landscape’s features – hedges, footpaths, bumps and hollows – can reveal glimpses of the lives of those who have gone before us, says Dr Susan Oosthuizen, University Senior Lecturer for Historic Environment (Landscapes and Gardens) at the Institute of Continuing Education.

Dr Oosthuizen’s research focuses on the attitudes and identities of the people who worked the English countryside between 400 and 1200 AD – in particular, what the remnants of Anglo-Saxon and medieval field systems reveal about the ways in which people from this period ran their lives. The open fields that existed across central and southern

England pre-enclosure – in existence around Cambridgeshire until the early 19th century – not only enabled them to make a living, but were also important places where relationships between community groups and those in authority were played out. Because of this, says Dr Oosthuizen, the landscape becomes a mnemonic for understanding the social and cultural values of the people who lived there.

Such research looks to the present as well as the past. “The management of farming was substantially consensual. The work of the French anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu demonstrated that the transmission of such underlying values from one generation to the next could be ongoing and personal, in just the same way that general attitudes to raising children, for example, are likely to have been passed on through the generations.

making a diFFerence

Views of the landThe study and appreciation of landscapes – their past and future threats – provide a framework for understanding major challenges that affect us all A

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Studying the landscape’s features can reveal glimpses of the lives of those who have gone before us


Perhaps the tradition of consensus in English culture has a long history?

“The general assumptions underpinning the attitudes that are at the heart of our relationships with other people tend not to be revealed until they are challenged by somebody who does things differently. Cultural diversity is interesting because it can result in a clash of values which may need to be examined critically. Where does toleration begin and end? History and archaeology have important roles to play in this debate.”

Landscape historians and archaeologists also have important contributions to make to the debate about how the historic environment should be preserved – as do members of the public. Community cohesion, explains Dr Oosthuizen, includes the involvement of citizens in the stewardship of the past. And if we have a better understanding

main picture: a modern-day fen landscape just north of reach, Cambridgeshire

Small pictures, top: a fingerpost at fulbourn, Cambridgeshire – english heritage has called on local authorities to retain and repair these distinctive rural and suburban featuresmiddle: the roman road on the gog magog DownsBottom: robert macfarlane, University Lecturer in english and author, in his film The Wild Places of Essex, which explores the county’s varied rural and urban landscapes

UNIvERSITY LECTURER in English and Fellow of Emmanuel Robert Macfarlane (pictured above) has written about the allure of British landscapes in his book The Wild Places.

He believes that many of us have a desire to connect with, and store our experiences of, the natural world – even if we struggle to put them into words. “The British find it embarrassingly easy to express affection for beloved pets, and formidably difficult to express affection for beloved landscapes,” he says.

“This is partly because we lack a widely available language for articulating the pleasure we receive from encountering and re-encountering certain trees, or the junction of four fields, or watching a wren thread through a bush. Such events are at once radiantly specific and vaguely generic. So it is that many people store these encounters away as memories that will be returned to privately in later life.

“That said, the need to express a personal connection with nature finds its outlets in poetry, painting, drawing, photography, gardening and blog-keeping, to give only a few examples, as well as in postcards, letters and phone-calls to friends and family. Such informal expressions of intimacy fascinate me.”

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of the past, and how it influences us, the better our chances of a successful cultural inheritance for our children and grandchildren.

The various and competing pressures on land, its uses and values provide major challenges to policy-makers and planners. In March of this year, the East of England Regional Assembly (now dissolved) published its revised East of England Plan, a blueprint for tackling the area’s housing shortage, encouraging economic development, reducing the impact of climate change and constructing a sustainable transport infrastructure by 2031. By then, the area’s population is expected to have grown to seven million (from 5.4 million in 2001) and, if the plan’s housing targets are met, the area will see a 40 per cent increase in the number of new dwellings being built.

Bill Adams, Moran Professor of

Conservation in the Department of Geography, wonders what kind of new landscapes this surge of development will create, and what it will take to make it work. “These plans are primarily about bricks and mortar, but just as important are the ecological and material flows such as energy, water and car travel surrounding them,” he says.

“In Britain we have become good at protecting beautiful rural landscapes, but we do not see clearly the connections to the other landscapes that supply them: the motorways, shopping malls and retail parks. We see the beautiful thatched cottage, but not the commuter’s four-by-four in the driveway.

Professor Adams, whose research focuses on relations between society and nature, says that people’s cultural and spiritual values of land also tend to get overlooked in landscape and nature conservation. Western ideas about what is ‘wild’ or ‘beautiful’, for example, often have little or no meaning to indigenous communities in developing countries.

“The Serengeti is often referred to as one of the world’s great wilderness areas, but the moment you start talking about it in those terms, you turn its people into interlopers. And if there is anywhere not likely to be a wilderness it is the African continent after millennia of human occupation. After all we evolved there.”

History, archaeology, planning, conservation… they all approach land and its uses in different ways.


prizes, aWards and honours

Queen’s birthday honours 2010professor colin Humphreys, Director of Research in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, has been awarded a knighthood for services to Science. A Fellow of Selwyn, Sir Colin founded and directs the Cambridge Centre for Gallium Nitride, which is developing energy-efficient lighting that would enable the Uk to close, or not build, eight power stations if adopted widely.

Using similar technology, he is also researching a new way to purify water in the developing and developed worlds, and to kill hospital superbugs. He founded and directs the Rolls-Royce University Technology Partnership in Advanced Materials at Cambridge, which is developing next-generation materials for Rolls-Royce jet engines to make them

more energy efficient. He has received many national and international medals for his research, has been President of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has recently been appointed Master of the Armourers and Brasiers’ Company in London, in addition to his other activities. He received a CBE from the Queen in 2003.

professor athene Donald, Deputy Head of the Cavendish Laboratory and Director of the Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative (WiSETI), has been appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) for services to Physics.

Dame Athene, a Fellow of Robinson, has worked at the University’s Cavendish

Laboratory since 1983 and was elected to the Royal Society in 1999.

Her current research lies at the interface of Physics and Biology, working on problems associated with protein aggregation and cellular biophysics. She has been responsible for building up this activity within the department and nationally, being the founding chair of the Institute of Physics Group in Biological Physics. This summer she won the Faraday Medal from the institute for outstanding contribution to experimental physics.

In 2009 she was awarded the L’Oreal/UNESCO Women in Science Award for Europe in recognition of this work. She has received numerous other prizes during her career, including the Bakerian Prize Lecture of the Royal Society in 2006.professor Athene Donald

professor Colin humphreys

Dr gerry Kearns

professor robin irvine

other awards➔ Dr Gerry Kearns, University Senior Lecturer and Fellow of Jesus, was honoured in the Royal Geographical Society’s annual Royal Medals and awards ceremony. Dr kearns won the Murchison Award “for publications in historical geography”. He was joined by Cambridge student lucy stapleton, co-winner of the Alfred Steers Dissertation Prize for the best undergraduate Geography dissertation in 2009.➔ professor robin irvine has been awarded the 2010 JR vane Medal from the British Pharmacological Society (BPS). The medal recognises his outstanding work in the field of molecular, cellular and signaling pharmacology. The presentation of the prize will be made at the BPS annual dinner and prizegiving ceremony, to be held in December in London.➔ Dr andrea Ferrari, Head of the Nanomaterials and Spectroscopy Group in the Electrical Engineering Division of the Department of Engineering, has been awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award by the Royal Society, the Uk’s national academy of science. The award is given to individuals of proven outstanding ability to undertake independent, original research.➔ professor sir John meurig thomas, is to give the Gerhard Ertl Prize Lecture at the Fritz-Haber Institute Berlin in December.➔ Dr andy Harter has won a prestigious

Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal. Dr Harter, who is Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge-based software company RealvNC Ltd and visiting Fellow of the Computer Laboratory’s Digital Technology Group, received the award for his outstanding contribution to British engineering. He is perhaps most notably responsible for virtual Networking Computing, a software system invented in 1995 that provides remote graphical access to a computer screen.➔ professor philip Gibbard, Professor of Quaternary Palaeoenvironments in the Department of Geography, was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Helsinki. This is the highest honour the University can bestow.➔ Dr bertie Gottgens, Reader in Molecular Haematology in the Department of Haematology, has been awarded the McCulloch and Till Award by the International Society for Stem Cells and Hematology. The award is given annually to the most promising younger group leader worldwide in stem cell and haematology research.➔ barbara J sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at the Department of Psychiatry, has been given the 2010 Senior Investigator Award by the International College of Geriatric Psychoneuropharmacology (ICGP)for her outstanding contribution over many years to translational cognitive psychopharmacology and the study of emotional and behavioural dysfunction. Professor Sahakian is due to receive the

award this month at the ICGP Annual Meeting in Athens.➔ professor clare Grey, of the Department of Chemistry, has been awarded the John Jeyes Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry “in recognition of her world leadership role in the use of solid-state NMR methods to study structure and function in inorganic materials, and specifically for the development and application of novel NMR methods to study structure and dynamics in lithium licals and manufacture”.➔ professor alastair compston, of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, is the joint recipient of the 2010 Zülch Prize, the most prestigious scientific distinction in basic neurological research in Germany. Professor Compston and Professor Hans Lassmann of the University of vienna received the award for scientific research on the pathophysiology and therapy of multiple sclerosis.➔ Dr barbara lorber of the Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair has received an Early Career Investigator Award from eye research charity Fight for Sight. Dr Lorber is researching the possibilities of transplanting specialist cells into the eye and optic nerve to repair the damage caused by glaucoma.➔ Dr steve morris has received the British Liquid Crystal Society Young Scientist of the Year award. Dr Morris is a researcher in the Centre of Molecular Materials for Photonics and Electronics at the Department.

Dr Andrea ferrari


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Dr richard Harrison, Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences and Fellow of St Catharine’s; Dr mark lillicrap, Associate Clinical Dean at the School of Clinical Medicine; Dr simon moore, Reader in Computer Architecture at the Computer Laboratory and Fellow of Trinity Hall; Dr Helen mott, Assistant Director of Research at the Department of Biochemistry and Fellow of Gonville and Caius; professor simon schaffer, of the Department of History and Philosophy of

Twelve of the University’s best teaching talents have been honoured at the annual Pilkington Prizes awards ceremony.

This year, prizes have gone to individuals who have pioneered new methods of learning, who have made outstanding contributions to outreach work, and who have shown an extraordinary capacity to connect with and inspire students. All are linked by their commitment to teaching of the highest quality.

The prizewinners, who received their awards from vice-Chancellor Professor Dame Alison Richard during a reception at Cripps Court, Magdalene, are:

Dr Julia Davies, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Plant Sciences; Dr mark elliott, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law and Fellow of St Catharine’s; Dr John Firth, Associate Clinical Dean of the School of Clinical Medicine, Fellow of Wolfson and Consultant Nephrologist; Dr simon Guest, Reader in Structural Mechanics at the Department of Engineering and Fellow of Trinity Hall;

pilkington prizes

Above: this year’s pilkington prizewinners with the Vice-Chancellor and high Steward Lord watson of richmond

Science and a Fellow of Darwin; Dr rob Wallach, of the Department of Material Sciences and Metallurgy and a Fellow of king’s; Dr Joachim Whaley, Senior Lecturer at the Department of German and Dutch and Fellow of Gonville and Caius; and Dr Hallvard lillehammer, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy.

The Pilkington Teaching Prizes were established in 1994 by businessman and alumnus of Trinity Sir Alastair Pilkington.


making a diFFerence

STAFF AND THEIR FAMILIES can learn more about the history of landscapes and gardens through a number of courses run by the Institute of Continuing Education.

The institute enrols more than 10,000 students a year, and plays a key role in linking education and research, and in the transfer of knowledge to wider society. Dr Susan Oosthuizen also organises a series of one-day Historic Environment Research Conferences through the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. These bring together leading experts in historic landscapes, parks and gardens to discuss new and unpublished research, and provide an

maKinG an impactopportunity for members of the public to engage with this work.

Dr Oosthuizen will also be appearing at this year’s Festival of Ideas, which runs from 20-31 October. She will give lectures on ‘Greens and commons in the landscape’ and ‘The archaeology of gardens’ (20 and 27 October respectively, 6pm at the Institute of Continuing Education, Madingley Hall) as well as lead ‘Finding a medieval village in the modern landscape’, a guided walk on 29 October around Burwell, Cambridgeshire, that uses buildings, ditches, banks and roads to reconstruct the medieval landscape and how it was used.

obituarY

robin matthews, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy and Master of Clare from 1975 to 1993, has died at the age of 83.

Robert Charles Oliver (‘Robin’) Matthews was born in Edinburgh on 16 June 1927 and educated at Edinburgh Academy. He went up to Oxford to study Classics and PPE at Corpus Christi College, before becoming a student at Nuffield College for a year, and then Lecturer at Merton College. In 1950 he moved to Cambridge, to take up a lectureship in the Faculty of Economics and a Fellowship of St John’s. He was lured back to Oxford in 1965 with the Drummond Professorship of Political Economy and a Fellowship of All Souls, before returning, finally, to Cambridge in 1975 to become Master of Clare. In 1980 he was appointed to the chair of Political Economy at Cambridge, a post he held until 1991. He continued as Master of Clare for another two years, retiring in 1993.

Robin Matthews was recognised as one of the leading economists of his generation. Among his many public appointments, he served as chair of

the Social Science Research Council, chairman of the academic panel of consultants set up by the Bank of England, a trustee of the Nuffield Foundation, and a member of an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development group of expert economists. His publications included A Study in Trade Cycle History and the magisterial British Economic Growth 1856–1973. He was elected to a Fellowship of the British Academy in 1968.

As Master of Clare, Robin Matthews was a strong supporter of co-education, and an enthusiastic champion of student rights and student opinion. He presided over the successful fundraising campaign to build a new undergraduate library and the expansion of student accommodation at Clare’s ‘Colony’.

He died in Cambridge on 19 June 2010, three days after his 83rd birthday.

But to what extent are these viewpoints coordinated for the wider benefit of society?

Dr Gloria Pungetti, Research Director at the Cambridge Centre for Landscape and People, believes that more could be done to promote a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to the study of, and dialogue surrounding, landscapes. The CCLP works to achieve this, disseminating research, organising workshops and courses, and making recommendations to governments, NGOs and policy-makers.

A recent research project, Eucaland, brought together 40 organisations from across 20 countries to consider the different types of European agricultural landscapes – their history, points of difference and similarity, the cultural and social meaning they have for various people, and how they can be managed sustainably in the future.

“Sustainability means to preserve both the natural and cultural heritage of our landscapes. Healthy ecological landscapes are crucial for nature conservation, and the enjoyment and appreciation of landscapes are important for people’s wellbeing,” she says.

“It is also important that these issues are properly communicated – to governments, those who formulate policy and to members of the public – if we want to achieve a sound balance between landscape conservation and development.”

Find out more➔ « For more information

about landscape and garden history courses at the Institute of Continuing Education, visit http://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/courses/subjects

➔ To book for Dr Oosthuizen’s lectures and walk (see box right), phone (01223) 746217 or email [email protected].

➔ The Festival of Ideas’ website is at http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/whatson/ideasfestival/

continued from page 11

Devil’s Dyke at reach

Sir

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Advertising on this page is open to University staff. The cost is £15 for a single insertion or £75 for six insertions. The deadline for the November/December issue is 1 October. Send your copy – no longer than 70 words – to the Editor at [email protected]

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Staff Newsletter - September/October 2010

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Transcript of Staff Newsletter - September/October 2010